Antinuclear

Australia’s energy white paper- there will be no nuclear power here for next two decades

Meltdown fears crush case for nuclear power, The Age November 7, 2012 Lenore Taylor National Affairs Correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald THE Fukushima nuclear accident has quashed consideration of nuclear power in Australia, with the government’s energy white paper arguing there is no compelling economic case for it and insufficient community acceptance.

And the Coalition won’t contest the conclusion when the long-awaited white paper is released on Thursday to set policy directions for the next two decades. The bipartisan reluctance to debate nuclear power comes despite the fact that some senior Labor and Coalition figures privately support the idea.

Resources Minister Martin Ferguson has said it should remain ”a live debate”. Foreign Minister Bob Carr said before he re-entered politics: ”I support nuclear power because I take global warming so very seriously … [it] should certainly play a role in Australia’s future mix of energy sources.”

Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop has said it should be considered ”in the mix” and Senator Barnaby Joyce has said: ”If we are fair dinkum about reducing carbon emissions … then uranium is where it’s going to be.”
But Labor and the Coalition are formally opposed to domestic use of nuclear power, and the Fukushima accident has reinforced that political judgment. The Greens are opposed to nuclear power and uranium mining.
Labor argues nuclear power is not economically necessary in Australia,
since the carbon tax and the renewable energy target are already
shifting power generation to renewables.
Coalition leader Tony Abbott once said he believed nuclear power was
the only realistic way for Australia to cut emissions, but at the last
election he argued the time was not right because Australia still had
abundant reserves of coal and gas. He said the Coalition had ”no
policy to promote nuclear power”.
In fact, neither major party has advocated nuclear power since John
Howard went to the 2007 election with an in-principle stance in
favour, and was attacked with a Labor television advertising campaign
asking in which marginal seat the nuclear reactors would be built.
: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/meltdown-fears-crush-case-for-nuclear-power-20121106-28w5s.html#ixzz2BYtKN1Oa

November 7, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics